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Joining The Dots

I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato's own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.

Roberto Rengifo

Rand and Rose Flem-Ath live in British Columbia, Canada. Both are librarians and have spent several years in the British Museum assembling evidence that they believe supports their contention that Antarctica was the home of Plato’s Atlantis. Together they wrote a highly controversial book, When the Sky Fell [0062], promoting the Antarctic location, which included an Introduction by Colin Wilson.

In 2000, Rand published his second book[063], co-authored with Colin Wilson on the subject of ancient civilisations including Atlantis. However, since then Wilson has changed his views and switched his support to Robert Sarmast’s theory of Atlantis being located off Cyprus.

In 2014, the Flem-Aths published Killing Moses[1090], which is a speculative account of the life and particularly the death of Moses, even identifying his killer(e). Their narrative builds on ideas originally expressed by Sigmund Freud [0101].*In 2017, they published From Atlantis to the Promised Land 1594], which is a recycling of a variety of material published by them over the past forty years.*

The Flem-Aths maintain an interesting and well illustrated website(a). It recently included a paper on his theory of crustal displacement written over twenty years ago(d).

Professor Steven Earle at the Geology Department of Malaspina University in British Columbia uses the Flem-Ath’s Crustal Displacement hypothesis as the basis for his students to write an essay on its inconsistency with our current understanding of crustal and mantle processes(b).

Further criticism of the Flem-Aths is offered by David L. Mohn(c), a Christian writer.

A new revised and expanded hardcopy edition of When the Sky Fell, entitled Atlantis Beneath the Ice, was published in 2012[981].

To put the Flem-Ath theory in historical context see my Antarctica entry, where I show that they were not the first to suggest the southern pole as the location of Atlantis, a distinction that belongs to Roberto Rengifo, nearly a century ago.

Antarctica takes its name from the Greek Anti Arktos, which means opposite the Arctic.

*The earliest literary reference to a city in Antarctica seems to have come from the pen of Edgar Allan Poe in his only full novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’ (z).*The idea of an Antarctic civilisation was also part of another novel, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder[1532] , by the Canadian author, James De Mille (1833-1880), published posthumously in 1888. In 1897, Jules Verne published An Antarctic Mystery(ab), which has been described as a response to Poe’s novel.*

Antarctica first entered the Atlantis debate as far back as 1923 when René-Maurice Gattefossé maintained that Atlantis had been located in the Atlantic and culturally influenced by an even earlier civilisation that had existed on Antarctica. In the same year another Frenchman, Dominique Sévriat, published a novel with the backdrop of an Atlantean Antarctic. H.P. Lovecraft published a short novel in 1931, At the Mountains of Madness[1522], which also used a Antarctic – Atlantis link.

Antarctica – without ice

Many other exotic claims have been made relating to Antarctica including that it was a UFO base(i) and that a refuge for Hitler had built there in an area that was known as Neuschwabenland(h).

However the earliest suggestion of Antarctica as the home of Atlantis seems to have come from a Chilean professor, Roberto Rengifo, who also proposed, in 1920, that Antarctica was the original home of modern man until a catastrophic pole shift forced a migration northward into the Americas and eventually worldwide! According to R.V.Eissmann, Arthur Posnansky made a similar suggestion around the same time.

Half a century was to pass before Antarctica itself was again promoted as the probable site of Atlantis by Flavio Barbiero in his book[061] published in Italian.

Twenty years later Rand & Rose Flem-Ath[062], supported by a well designed website(a), published a similar theory that received widespread exposure in the English-speaking world. Subsequently, Rand Flem-Ath co-authored with Colin Wilson a second book[063] that added further background to the theory. Colin Wilson has more recently abandoned his support for Antarctica, as he eventually found the idea of Atlantis based here waging war against Athens, 5,000 miles away, untenable and now supports Robert Sarmast’s idea of Cyprus as the location of Atlantis.

Andrew Collins is another writer who was initially attracted to the Antarctica hypothesis, but eventually opted for Cuba as the location of Atlantis.*He later wrote a brief refutation of the Antarctic theory(aa).*

In 2007, David Stewart Jnr., a prominent Mormon writer, offered support for Flem-Ath’s theory in an article on his scripture history website.

The Antarctic theory is dependent on the acceptance of a number of hotly debated fundamentals, among which are: earth crust displacement (Pole Shift), a 10,000 BC date for Atlantis, Posnansky’s dating of Tiahuanaco and the interpretation of the Piri Reis Map.

The late Robert Solàrion produced his own ‘pole shift’ theory of Polar Axial Displacement that he outlined on website.*The Flem-Aths have cited the Solar Typhoon Hypothesis(y) of Jared Freedman in support of their Atlantis location theory. Nevertheless, I must point out that even if there had been some sort of Pole Shift, it does not prove that Antarctica had been home to Atlantis as it still conflicts dramatically with the geographical pointers offered bt Plato.*

An ice core, 3 km long, which was recently recovered from Antarctica, has shown a continuous record stretching back 740,000 years. This would appear to indicate that the region was never without ice cover during that period, contradicting the Flem-Ath theory of Plato’s Atlantis being in Antarctica. This argument is tackled in Appendix 6 of The Atlantis Blueprint.

Another author who claims that the Antarctic ice sheet is not more than 6,000 years old is the Australian archaeologist Peter ‘Mungo’ Jupp. He has expanded on his views in a DVD(d). His principal claim is that ice core data has been misinterpreted as it is based on a false assumption that there is a layer per year, while there is evidence that a number of layers have been created anually(e). He does not directly enter the Atlantis debate but the evidence he adduces to support his thesis are more usually employed to support the Atlantis in Antarctica viewpoint.

Two German writers, Fritz Nestke & Thomas Reimer, have also supported the idea of Atlantis in Antarctica with their own 1988 book[064]. Patrick Geryl & Gino Ratinckx have predicted[066] a catastrophic pole reversal in 2012 and are ‘certain’ that an earlier pole change resulted in Atlantis being situated under the ice of the South Pole.

The controversial Nigel Appleby in his Hall of the Gods[0076] expressed the view that there had been a previous worldwide civilisation and “that a major portion of this civilisation still remains practically intact beneath the ice of Antarctica.“

Although not directly connect to the Antarctic-Atlantis debate, the late French mariner Robert Argod has given us a fascinating book[065] that supports the idea that the Polynesians originated in Antarctica and that their influence is to be found further afield.

The French science-fiction writer, René Barjavel, used the Antarctic Atlantis location in his 1968 novel, La Nuit des temps.

Arguments against the idea of ‘Atlantis in Antarctica’, by Paul V. Heinrich, can be found on the Internet(c).

Those that still have the temerity to support the concept of an Antarctican Atlantis may find this recent (March 2013) image of the continent ice-free(f) published by Scientific American(f) interesting. An overview of the Antarctic Hypothesis published in July 2014(g) may be of use for anyone new to the idea.

2013 also saw the publication of The Three Ages of Atlantis[972] by Marin, Minella & Schievenin, in which proposed the existence of three Atlantises, with the original Atlantis situated in Antarctica and destroyed 15,000 years ago!

Around the same time there was a media report claiming the discovery of three pyramids in Antarctica! Naturally, the story did not stand up to scrutiny(k) and slowly melted away.

In 2015 Britt du Fournet published an extensive blog reviewing the range of Atlantis theories on offer. In conclusion, she found the Antarctic location the most credible(j). 2016 saw two French researcher, Jean Seimple(l) and Fabien Pardo(v) join the Antarctic Supporters Club and thrill us with the even more bizarre claim that an Antarctic Atlantis is ‘clearly’ indicated by the features and the dimensions in the Great Pyramid(r)!

Another ‘off the wall’ suggestion is that Atlantis = Aztlan = Antarctica’(t) .

In June 2016 an anonymous article(m) also supporting the Atlantis in Antarctica idea was being recycled around the Internet. It trotted out the usual ambiguous ‘evidence’ – the Piri Reis and the Oronteus Finaeus maps, fine grained sediments, ancients forests, combined with a huge dollop of speculation. The purveyors of this nonsense know that they will be long dead before the icecap melts, if ever, and the irrationality of their claims are finally exposed. Apart from that, an Antarctic location seriously conflicts with Plato’s description of Atlantis, which he describes as extending from Libya (North Africa) to central Italy.

Conspiracy theorist David Wilcock has managed to weave the Atlantis in Antarctica story into his twisted idea that the world is controlled by a cabal of evil alien and human conspirators. Jason Colavito has highlighted that Wilcock has even tried to charge for his particular brand of male cow effluent(s).

An overview, including a video, of the origins of Antarctica commencing when it was part of the Gondwana, the supercontinent, can be viewed online(n).

The British tabloid The Daily Star(o) and many others(q) offered a further recycling of the Atlantis in the Antarctic theory in December 2016 in a pathetic attempt to breathe new life into it. One site(p) in particular, demonstrates its lack of research, describing this theory, with a near century old pedigree, as the “newest” Atlantis location.

Further claims emerged in May 2017 that “some scientists think that they’ve found Atlantis, and it’s underneath Antarctica. They’ve discovered a series of gigantic structures buried underneath this South Pole ice cap”.(u) Fake News!

This recent flurry of media interest in Antarctica and Atlantis, has been milked by attention seeking ‘researchers’ such as Joseph P. Farrell, who went further and managed to tie it all in with flying saucers, Edgar Cayce and the Kennedy assassination(w)(x). Farrell has studied Patristics, which is concerned with the study of the early church Fathers and, in my opinion, he should have stuck with that subject.

As I have alluded to above, it seems to me that those who promote the daft idea of an Antarctic Atlantis, do so in the knowledge that the icecap there is unlikely to disappear within their lifetime, which might reveal evidence for or against the proposition. However, the most telling argument against this polar location is the nonsensical idea that any civilisation situated there would launch an attack on Athens and/or Egypt, situated over 5,000 miles away. It was the realisation of this, however belatedly, by the late Colin Wilson that led him to withdraw his support for the Antarctic location.